Spellheart 10: Chapter 42 (Patreon)

I had feared something like this might happen when we returned to the Primordial World, hence all the work on new arms and armor. And also why I’d emphasized being quick, quiet, and discrete during our operations here. Unfortunately, my new allies had a different idea of discrete than I did, and now we were face to face with the law.

“This is not a settlement claimed by the Elven Star Dominion. You are out of your chronological jurisdiction!” Sam pointed a finger accusatorily.

“Save the passionate speech for prison, human! It’ll make you popular with the Sorcerers there...” the lead police Demigod spat.

I stood from where I’d been kneeling to talk to the two captives. “Look, we were arrested under false pretenses. Your guys got a tip from a bad actor abusing your legal system. We’re not bad guys, honest!”

The Demigod flicked her gaze to the two bound and gaged elves on the ground before me.

I sighed. “Yeah, alright. It looks pretty bad. Would it help if I told you I was about to let them go?”

“Guards! Bring them in dead or alive!” the commander of the police forces shouted.

“I’ll take that as a no...” I grumbled. Soon as we got out of this mess, I was going to sit my new allies down and teach them how to bribe people and avoid bringing the cops down on us.

But I couldn’t blame Lyssandra and the others for this. We were bound to have another run-in with the law eventually.

I sized up our opponents.

Law Enforcement Captain (Level 57, Late Demigod)

Law Enforcement Lieutenant (Level 52, Early Demigod) x3

Law Enforcement Officer (Level 45, Mid Sorcerer) x7

If the Sorcerers had been unarmed, they wouldn’t have even been a factor in this fight. The trouble was the golem armor they were wearing. Like before, these were heavy-duty bronze suits. Unlike before, each stood quite taller than before and seemed much heavier duty.

The impression I got from these was that the ones we’d faced before were meant for routine police work. These were meant for war. Clearly, someone in the Elven Star Dominion thought this would be enough to take us down. And I feared just a little that they might be right.

With Arien, Lyssandra, Melaris, Yeminel, Lyanva, Tivana, Assyrus, Nela, Sam, Dean, and me, we were just about evenly matched. But they had a Late Demigod, and we didn’t. Plus, most of our Demigods were much newer to their power. Our enemies were from the Elven Star Dominion, and their training was no joke. I’d fought Sorcerers from them before, and they were definitely a notch above the skill level I was used to.

“I’ll take the tough chick!” Dean declared as he rushed a the captain, axe in hand. She turned at his approach and withdrew a long rapier from her side. From the shine of it, that was no ironwood weapon. It was adamantium, just like the kind I made.

She flicked her blade like she expected to cut the head of Dean’s axe off with one swing. She was surprised when Dean blocked the strike and followed up with a shove. Then her expression firmed, and the way she moved made it clear that Dean wouldn’t be getting in any easier hits.

Sam squared off against one of the three lieutenants. She came at him with a mace, swinging overhead in a large sweeping arc. It looked for all the world like Sam was about to have his head bashed in, but when the mace was about to hit him, it swept through empty air.

The lieutenant turned her miss into a horizontal slash, only to strike one of the Sorcerers in their war golem instead. She left a big dent in her ally’s arm.

“You’re a slippery one!” she yelled.

“There’s a lot of crude remarks I could make in reply to that,” Sam said as he crouched low and swept out a leg, taking the lieutenant’s legs out from under her. The moment she was down, he pointed his shiny new revolver at her and aimed at the weak joints in her golem armor. Three quick bangs and it looked like the magitech limb would never move again.

He was doing well. Dean, a bit less so. But they were both Demigods with hundreds of years of adventure through the Primordial World under their belts. The rest of my companions were a bit fresher-faced.

Tivana was holding her own against one golem, and given half a minute to take her opponent apart, she’d win and be able to help the others. Nela and Assyrus hadn’t fully come to terms with their concepts, though, and I sensed neither of them being used. They’d been surprised and hadn’t learned how to summon up their Demigod powers without a few moments of concentration ahead of time.

Arien, Lyssandra, Melaris, and Yeminel each took on one golem. From my brief glimpse, Lyssandra, Melaris, and Arien were winning, while Yeminel was struggling with her foe. Gusts of warm breeze and ocean spray were handy in the event of bad weather, but they weren’t exactly good at stopping a several-ton war golem. The sword I’d made for her would work fine if only she had the guts to close the distance between her and her opponent.

As for me, I was head-to-head with the remaining lieutenant. She was a Mid Demigod just like me, and she was taking our fight seriously. I didn’t think it was an accident that the more powerful force members sent to apprehend us went after us humans.

There had been even more humans active during the Elven Star Dominion. They knew we had some innate gifts and an affinity for zeal that was hard to beat. The one I faced had come prepared with a pair of mithril shock batons. Each time she smacked me, she drained away a little power.

It would have been a lot of power if I’d only practiced Spirit Cultivation, but thanks to my World Titan Fiendbody she was getting drops where she should have gotten buckets. The fact that I also had much more power than someone at my level ought to mean that I had the advantage of defending against her.

But I needed to do more than just defend. Somebody had to win their fight early to help the others and start swinging this battle in our favor, and I was determined that someone should be me.

When my opponent swung wide, I turned to smoke and vanished. She whirled behind her, convinced I’d appear there. I felt the weapons swing through where I’d appear, thanks to Assyrus’ Champion concept.

A moment later, I switched to Tivana’s Impossible concept, opening up a hole in her defenses that should have been too small to be exploited. Her foot slipped a little too wide for a fraction of a second. She could have recovered in a fraction of a second, but I didn’t give her that fraction of a second. I swept her batons aside with a shove from my forearm, then planted my fist in her guts.

She would have gone flying into orbit in the World of Sanctuary and Serenity. But here in the Primordial World, she only went flying into the nearby wall. I knocked the wind clean out of her, and it would take a couple of seconds for her to recover.

“Stay down,” I warned her. So far, I’d avoided killing any of the Elven Star Dominion’s enforces. Doing that would get Immortal Ascendants on our ass faster than anything else. If it was possible to keep this fight bloodless, that’d be for the best. But these ladies weren't exactly making it easy for us.

The moment I was free, I ran toward Sam. His opponent seemed to grow increasingly frustrated that she couldn’t hit him. She could probably feel Sam’s curses settling in, guaranteeing ill fortune for her in the imminent future.

But Sam’s spells would take a long time to end this fight. Fate zeal wasn’t known for being timely and efficient. So, while he distracted his opponent, I tackled her from behind. The blow knocked the mace from her hands, and she struggled in my grip.

This one was strong for an elf. Really, really strong. I could tell her concept had something to do with physical power and was helping her. Still, between the two of us, I was still stronger. More than that, though, I was also much taller.

If each of us were swinging our weapons, it wouldn’t have been that big a deal. But here on the ground, with the two of us locked in a wrestle, I had the leverage to toss her around like a kid with a stuffed animal.

“Get off me!” she yelled.

“No,” I replied as I rolled her onto her back. I planted a knee there to pin her to the ground, then forced her right ankle and her left arm together. Then I rummaged around her belt until I found something resembling handcuffs. It took a second to figure out how they worked, but when they clicked, they proved too strong for even a Demigod to break. No doubt she’d been planning on using those on us.

“Sam, I need--“

“Already on it!” Sam said as he rushed toward Dean. Dean had been struggling a bit in his fight. His opponent was a late Demigod, and she was damn fast. After his initial shove, she’d unleashed a fury of blows that carved thin lines into Dean’s flesh all over his body. Without support, Dean wouldn’t last much longer.

But Sam was just the kind of help he needed. When Sam arrived, Dean’s wounds reversed themselves and he was restored to full health. The two didn’t even exchange words as they flung themselves into battle. Dean was still outmatched in speed and power, but thanks to Sam’s presence, whenever she tried to overwhelm Dean, she left herself open to a powerful fate curse.

I trusted them to hold off the Late Demigod a little longer while I saved the others.

Yeminel was on the ground. One of the war golems had her pinned, and the pilot was struggling to put handcuffs on her with clumsy metal hands. Yeminel was battered and bruised, but still breathing. I could rescue her later.

Lyanva had found her way onto a golem pilot’s back. She wasn’t doing much of anything, hammering her fists against enchanted bronze, but neither could her opponent do anything to her as they flailed wildly straight through the wall to a neighboring room.

Arien had taken a bad hit and had the wind knocked out of her. She struggled to stand properly too and might have twisted something. Before long, she’d be down too. Fortunately, Lyssandra was nearly done with her battle and was moments away from ripping the Sorcerer pilot right out of the war golem. Melaris was still holding her own.

Nela was also down, since she couldn’t activate her concept. She also wasn’t usually one for fighting at such close quarters. The beams of light she shot were fast and covered a great distance, but were hard to maneuver in this cramped battlefield. She had a handcuff dangling around one wrist, which probably meant she’d been pinned at one point but slipped away.

She needed help the most. I rushed her opponent from behind. My hands were much tougher than Lyanva’s, so instead of beating against enchanted bronze, I found the grooves and tugged until the plates bent. I’d seen the backs of these things open up, so there had to be a latch somewhere... there!

I triggered the latch before pulling a terrified Sorcerer from the suit and tossing her across the room at the superior officer I’d punched. She was only now getting back to her feet after I knocked the wind out of her, and getting hit in the face by a flying Sorcerer knocked her right back on her ass.

I helped Nela up. She held up her cuffed wrist.

“It’s... draining...” she mumbled, words slurred. I realized her problem immediately. The cuffs depleted an elf’s zeal, and even though she just had one of them on, it was still sapping her power. I hooked a finger on either side of the joint of the cuff and twisted. With a jerk, the cuff snapped and fell to the ground. Color immediately began returning to Nela’s face.

“Focus and activate that concept of yours!” I said. Nela nodded, closed her eyes, and furrowed her brows. It took her a second, but I felt new strength flowing through her.

Near us, Assyrus had been locked in a battle with a four-armed war golem. It wielded a weapon in each hand and was trying to overwhelm Assyrus under the sheer volume of attacks. It couldn’t have picked a worse opponent for such a strategy. During the fight, Assyrus must have been able to activate a concept because she flowed neatly between her enemy’s weapons like they weren’t even there. Each time she did so, she landed a delicate strike across the bronze plates of the golem’s chest.

When Nela blasted the war golem from the side with a beam of golden light, the battle was as good as over. I let the two of them take care of it while I launched myself at Tivana’s opponent. I grabbed the war golem from behind, wrestling with the incredible might behind the magical limbs as I pinned the golem in a headlock.

“Give that new sword a try!” I grunted.

Tivana whipped her blade out in front of her, taking off both the golem’s struggling hands with razor-thin wires of spatial zeal flung from the tip of her sword. Then she grabbed the blade halfway down the sword’s length and jammed it between the bronze plates. The metal of the sword I’d forged for her was far stronger than simple enchanted bronze, and when Tivana twisted, the plates gave way to reveal the startled golem pilot beneath. Tivana flicked her fingers and lines of spatial zeal shot through the control system within the golem, ruining them and leaving the pilot stuck in a non-functional suit.

Behind me, I heard Nela and Assyrus finish their fight. Tivana rushed to help her mother, and Lyssandra finished her fight alone. Arien was down, but before her opponent could handcuff her, I grabbed the war golem and yanked her off her feet.

By now, the fight had turned in our favor, and I wasn’t the only one who’d seen it. The captain jumped clear of Dean’s latest swing and cupped her hands. “Fall back! These fiends are tougher than we thought!”

The lieutenant I’d fought grabbed two of her disarmed subordinates as she jumped to her feet. Someone scooped up the one I’d handcuffed. The police retreated with practiced efficiency. It seemed like the law enforcement agents of the Elven Star Dominion knew when to cut their losses.

I looked around the destroyed inn with a sigh. The owner of this place would not be happy with us. Materials from the Primordial World did not come cheap. Perhaps now was as good a time as any to give Lyssandra a lesson on bribery.